Mt.Gilead CHURCH OF CHRIST

"Where you are always welcome"

Sermons for Today

United States Marine
Corps Commandant General Robert B. Neller told the House
Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense: "It's a strategic issue that
less than 30 percent of the young men and women of our nation are
qualified just to join the military, either because of physical,
mental or moral issues."

Think about that for
a minute.

It means that7 out of 10 young Americans between roughly 17 and say 30 are
NOT qualified to serve in the military for "physical, mental or
moral issues."

Quotes from Tucker
Carlson (news commentator) on stats about modern males:

"The signs are
everywhere. If you’re a middle aged man, you probably know a peer
who has killed himself in recent years. At least one. If you’re a
parent, you may have noticed that your daughter’s friends seem a
little more on the ball than your son’s. They get better grades.
They smoke less weed. They go to more prestigious colleges. If
you’re an employer, you may have noticed that your female employees
show up on time, whereas the young men often don’t. And of course if
you live in this country, you’ve just seen a horrifying series of
mass shootings, far more than we’ve ever had. Women didn’t do that.
In every case, the shooter was a man...

"The average
American man will die five years before the average American woman.
One of the reasons for this is addiction. Men are more than twice as
likely as women to become alcoholics. They’re also twice as likely
to die of a drug OD. In New Hampshire, one of the states hit hardest
by the opioid crisis, 73 percent of overdose deaths were men.

"But the saddest
reason for shortened life spans is suicide. Seventy-seven percent of
all suicides are committed by men. The overall rate is increasing at
a dramatic pace. Between 1997 and 2014, there was a 43 percent rise
in suicide deaths among middle aged American men. The rates are
highest among American Indian and white men, who kill themselves at
about ten times the rate of Hispanic and black women.

"You often hear of
America’s incarceration crisis. That’s almost exclusively a male
problem too. Over 90 percent of inmates are male.

"These problems are
complex, and they start young. Relative to girls, boys are failing
in school. More girls than boys graduate high school. Considerably
more go to and graduate from college. Boys account for the
overwhelming majority of school discipline cases. One study found
that fully one in five high school boys had been diagnosed with
hyperactivity disorder, compared with just one in 11 girls. Many
were medicated for it. The long term health effects of those
medications aren’t fully understood, but they appear to include
depression in later life...

"For men, the
consequences of failing in school are profound. Between 1979-2010,
working age men with only high school degrees saw their real hourly
wages drop about 20 percent. Over the same period, high school
educated women saw their wages rise. The decline of the industrial
economy disproportionately hurt men.

"There are now seven
million working age American men who are no longer in the labor
force. They’ve dropped out. Nearly half of them take pain medication
on any given day. That’s the highest rate in the world.

Women on average are scoring
higher on IQ tests than men are.

"Men are even
falling behind physically. A recent study found that almost half of
young men failed the Army's entry-level physical fitness test during
basic training. Fully seventy percent of American men are overweight
or obese, as compared to 59 percent of American women.

"… Testosterone
levels in men have also fallen precipitously. One study found that
the average levels of male testosterone dropped by one percent every
year after 1987. This is unrelated to age. The average
40-year-old-man in 2017 would have testosterone levels 30 percent
lower than the average 40-year-old man in 1987.

Christopher Hodapp
(blogger and author) says:

Meanwhile, consider
the huge shift in attitudes about adolescence and adulthood itself.
As recently as World War II, it was not an uncommon story to hear
about men lying about their age to join the military as young as 16
or 17. In the 1960s, there was an insistent clamor to reduce the age
of consent lower, and the drinking and voting ages were dropped from
21 down to 18 to coincide with the draft age (and in time for the
1972 presidential election) — the 26th Amendment giving 18 year olds
the vote was passed by the states faster than any other
Constitutional amendment in history. But in the last decade,
something quite bizarre has happened. Smoking ages and drinking ages
have been almost uniformly increased by state laws back UP to 21,
and now states are attempting to raise the age of various gun
purchases to that higher age, as well. It seems that 18 year olds
are deemed less trustworthy or less responsible than they were in
1970 in the public perception. Likewise, when the Obamacare laws
were enacted, the age of child dependents permitted to stay on their
parents' insurance plans rose all the way up to age 26 — further
reinforcing the social acceptance that the age of childhood could
now be prolonged beyond a quarter of a century — nearly a full third
of the average lifespan today. Indeed, more 25 year olds today are
still living with — and off the labors of — their parents (or even
grandparents) than at any time in recorded history. And a
substantially higher percentage of these 25 year old, at-home
children are men than women.